we visited the stables, the garage, an artesian well newly driven, a drive that was to skirt the sea, a sunken garden some distance from the house and away from the sea.
next spring i came once more—several times, in fact. the rose garden was then in bloom, the drives finished, the pictures hung. although this was not a world in which society as yet deigned to move, it was entirely conceivable that at a later period it might, and betimes it was crowded with people smart enough and more agreeable in the main than the hardy, strident members of the so-called really inner circles. there were artists, writers, playwrights, singers, actresses, and some nondescript figures of the ultra-social world—young men principally who seemed to come here in connection with beautiful young women, models and other girls whose beauty was their only recommendation to consideration.
the scene was not without brilliance. a butler and numerous flunkeys fluttered to and fro. guests were received at the door by a footman. a housekeeper and various severe-looking maids governed in the matter of cleaning. one could play golf, tennis, bridge, motor, fish, swim, drink in a free and even disconcerting manner or read quietly in one angle or another of the grounds. there were affairs, much flirting and giggling, suspicious wanderings to and fro at night—no questions asked as to who came or whether one was married, so long as a reasonable amount of decorum was maintained. it was the same on other occasions, only the house and grounds were full to overflowing with guests and passing friends, whose machines barked in the drives. i saw as many gay and fascinating costumes and heard as much clever and at times informative talk here as anywhere i have been.
during this fall and winter i was engaged in work which kept me very much to myself. during the period i read much of x——, banks he was combining, new ventures he was undertaking. yet all at once one winter's day, and out of a clear sky, the papers were full of an enormous financial crash of which he was the center. according to the newspapers, the first and foremost of a chain of banks of which he was the head, to say nothing of a bonding and realty company and some street-railway project on long island, were all involved in the crash. curiously, although no derogatory mention had previously been made of him, the articles and editorials were now most vituperative. their venom was especially noticeable. he was a get-rich-quick villain of the vilest stripe; he had been juggling a bank, a trust company, an insurance company and a land and street-railway speculative scheme as one would glass balls. the money wherewith he gambled was not his. he had robbed the poor, deceived them. yet among all this and in the huge articles which appeared the very first day, i noted one paragraph which stuck in my mind, for i was naturally interested in all this and in him. it read:
"wall street heard yesterday that superintendent h——got his first information concerning the state in which x——'s affairs were from quarters where resentment may have been cherished because of his activity in the long island traction field. this is one of the street's 'clover patches' and the success which the newcomer seemed to be meeting did not provoke great pleasure."
another item read:
"a hitch in a deal that was to have transferred the south shore to the new york and queens county system, owned by the long island railroad, at a profit of almost $2,000,000 to x——, was the cause of all the trouble. very active displeasure on the part of certain powers in wall street blocked, it is said, the closing of the deal for the railroad. they did not want him in this field, and were powerful enough to prevent it. at the same time pressure from other directions was brought to bear on him. the clearing-house refused to clear for his banks. x—— was in need of cash, but still insisting on a high rate of remuneration for the road which he had developed to an important point. their sinister influences entered and blocked the transfer until it was no longer possible for him to hold out."
along with these two items was a vast mass of data, really pages, showing how, when, where he had done thus and so, "juggled accounts" between one bank and another, all of which he controlled however, and most of which he owned, drew out large sums and put in their place mortgages on, or securities in, new companies which he was organizing—tricks which were the ordinary routine of wall street and hence rather ridiculous as the sub-stone of so vast a hue and cry.
i was puzzled and, more than that, moved by the drama of the man's sudden end, for i understood a little of finance and its ways, also of what place and power had plainly come to mean to him. it must be dreadful. yet how could it be, i asked myself, if he really owned fifty-one per cent or more in so many companies that he could be such a dark villain? after all, ownership is ownership, and control, control. on the face of the reports themselves his schemes did not look so black. i read everything in connection with him with care.
as the days passed various other things happened. for one thing, he tried to commit suicide by jumping out of a window of his studio in new york; for another, he tried to take poison. now of a sudden a bachelor sister, of whom i had never heard in all the time i had known him, put in an appearance as his nearest of kin—a woman whose name was not his own but a variation of it, an "-ovitch" having suddenly been tacked onto it. she took him to a sanitarium, from which he was eventually turned out as a criminal, then to a hospital, until finally he surrendered himself to the police. the names of great lawyers and other bankers began to enter the case. alienists of repute, those fine chameleons of the legal world, were employed who swore first that he was insane, then that he was not. his sister, who was a physician and scientist of repute, asked the transfer of all his property to her on the ground that he was incompetent and that she was his next of kin. to this she swore, giving as her reasons for believing him insane that he had "illusions of grandeur" and that he believed himself "persecuted by eminent financiers," things which smacked more of sanity than anything else to me. at the same time he and she, as time rather indicated, had arranged this in part in the hope of saving something out of the great wreck. there were other curious features: certain eminent men in politics and finance who from revelations made by the books of the various banks were in close financial if not personal relations with x—— denied this completely. curiously, the great cry on the part of these was that he was insane, must be, and that he was all alone in his schemes. his life on broadway, on long island, in his studio in new york, were ransacked for details. enough could not be made of his gay, shameful, spendthrift life. no one else, of course, had ever been either gay or shameful before—especially not the eminent and hounding financiers.
then from somewhere appeared a new element. in a staggeringly low tenement region in brooklyn was discovered somehow or other a very old man and woman, most unsatisfactory as relatives of such imposing people, who insisted that they were his parents, that years before because he and his sister were exceedingly restless and ambitious, they had left them and had only returned occasionally to borrow money, finally ceasing to come at all. in proof of this, letters, witnesses, old photos, were produced. it really did appear as if he and his sister, although they had long vigorously denied it, really were the son and daughter of the two who had been petty bakers in brooklyn, laying up a little competence of their own. i never knew who "dug" them up, but the reason why was plain enough. the sister was laying claim to the property as the next of kin. if this could be offset, even though x—— were insane, the property would at once be thrown into the hands of the various creditors and sold under a forced sale, of course—in other words, for a song—for their benefit. naturally it was of interest to those who wished to have his affairs wound up to have the old people produced. but the great financier had been spreading the report all along that he was from russia, that his parents, or pseudo-parents, were still there, but that really he was the illegitimate son of the czar of russia, boarded out originally with a poor family. now, however, the old people were brought from brooklyn and compelled to confront him. it was never really proved that he and his sister had neglected them utterly or had done anything to seriously injure them, but rather that as they had grown in place and station they had become more or less estranged and so ignored them, having changed their names and soared in a world little dreamed of by their parents. also a perjury charge was made against the sister which effectually prevented her from controlling his estate, a lease long enough to give the financiers time for their work. naturally there was a great hue and cry over her, the scandal, the shame, that they should thus publicly refuse to recognize their parents as they did or had when confronted by them. horrible! there were most heavily illustrated and tearful sunday articles, all blazoned forth with pictures of his house and studio, his banks, cars, yacht, groups of guests, while the motives of those who produced the parents were overlooked. the pictures of the parents confronting x—— and his sister portrayed very old and feeble people, and were rather moving. they insisted that they were his parents and wept brokenly in their hands. but why? and he denying it! his sister, who resented all this bitterly and who stood by him valiantly, repudiated, for his sake of course, his and her so-called parents and friends.
i never saw such a running to cover of "friends" in all my life. of all those i had seen about his place and in his company, scores on scores of people reasonably well known in the arts, the stage, the worlds of finance and music, all eating his dinners, riding in his cars, drinking his wines, there was scarcely any one now who knew him anything more than "casually" or "slightly"—oh, so slightly! when rumors as to the midnight suppers, the bacchic dancing, the automobile parties to his great country place and the spirited frolics which occurred there began to get abroad, there was no one whom i knew who had ever been there or knew anything about him or them. for instance, of all the people who had been close or closest and might therefore have been expected to be friendly and deeply concerned was de shay, his fidus achates and literally his pensioner—yet de shay was almost the loudest in his denunciation or at least deprecation of x——, his habits and methods! although it was he who had told me of mme.—— and her relation to x——, who urged me to come here, there and the other place, especially where x—— was the host, always assuring me that it would be so wonderful and that x—— was really such a great man, so generous, so worth-while, he was now really the loudest or at least the most stand-offish in his comments, pretending never to have been very close to x——, and lifting his eyebrows in astonishment as though he had not even guessed what he had actually engineered. his "did-you-hears," "did-you-knows" and "wouldn't-have-dreamed" would have done credit to a tea-party. he was so shocked, especially at x——'s robbing poor children and orphans, although in so far as my reading of the papers went i could find nothing that went to prove that he had any intention of robbing anybody—that is, directly. in the usual wall street high finance style he was robbing peter to pay paul, that is, he was using the monies of one corporation which he controlled to bolster up any of the others which he controlled, and was "washing one hand with the other," a proceeding so common in finance that to really radically and truly oppose it, or do away with it, would mean to bring down the whole fabric of finance in one grand crash.
be that as it may. in swift succession there now followed the so-called "legal" seizure and confiscation of all his properties. in the first place, by alienists representing the district attorney and the state banking department, he was declared sane and placed on trial for embezzlement. secondly, his sister's plea that his property be put into her hands as trustee or administrator was thrown out of court and she herself arrested and confined for perjury on the ground that she had perjured herself in swearing that she was his next of kin when in reality his real parents, or so they swore, were alive and in america. next, his banks, trust companies and various concerns, including his great country estate, were swiftly thrown into the hands of receivers (what an appropriate name!) and wound up "for the benefit of creditors." all the while x——was in prison, protesting that he was really not guilty, that he was solvent, or had been until he was attacked by the state bank examiner or the department back of him, and that he was the victim of a cold-blooded conspiracy which was using the state banking department and other means to drive him out of financial life, and that solely because of his desire to grow and because by chance he had been impinging upon one of the choicest and most closely guarded fields of the ultra-rich of wall street—the street railway area in new york and brooklyn.
one day, so he publicly swore to the grand jury, by which he was being examined, as he was sitting in his great offices, in one of the great sky-scrapers of new york, which occupied an entire floor and commanded vast panoramas in every direction (another evidence of the man's insane "delusion of grandeur," i presume), he was called to answer the telephone. one mr. y——, so his assistant said, one of the eminent financiers of wall street and america, was on the wire. without any preliminary and merely asking was this mr. x——on the wire, the latter proceeded, "this is mr. y——. listen closely to what i am going to say. i want you to get out of the street railway business in new york or something is going to happen to you. i am giving you a reasonable warning. take it." then the phone clicked most savagely and ominously and superiorly at the other end.
"i knew at the time," went on x——, addressing the grand jury, "that i was really listening to the man who was most powerful in such affairs in new york and elsewhere and that he meant what he said. at the same time i was in no position to get out without closing up the one deal which stood to net me two million dollars clear if i closed it. at the same time i wanted to enter this field and didn't see why i shouldn't. if i didn't it spelled not ruin by any means but a considerable loss, a very great loss, to me, in more ways than one. oddly enough, just at this time i was being pressed by those with whom i was associated to wind up this particular venture and turn my attention to other things. i have often wondered, in the light of their subsequent actions, why they should have become so pressing just at this time. at the same time, perhaps i was a little vain and self-sufficient. i had once got the better of some agents of another great financier in a western power deal, and i felt that i could put this thing through too. hence i refused to heed the warning. however, i found that all those who were previously interested to buy or at least develop the property were now suddenly grown cold, and a little later when, having entered on several other matters, i needed considerable cash, the state banking department descended on me and, crying fraud and insolvency, closed all my banks.
"you know how it is when they do this to you. cry 'fire!' and you can nearly wreck a perfectly good theater building. depositors withdraw, securities tumble, investigation and legal expenses begin, your financial associates get frightened or ashamed and desert you. nothing is so squeamish or so retiring and nervous as money. time will show that i was not insolvent at the time. the books will show a few technically illegal things, but so would the books or the affairs of any great bank, especially at this time, if quickly examined. i was doing no more than all were doing, but they wanted to get me out—and they did."
regardless of proceedings of various kinds—legal, technical and the like—x—— was finally sent to the penitentiary, and spent some time there. at the same time his confession finally wrecked about nine other eminent men, financiers all. a dispassionate examination of all the evidence eight years later caused me to conclude without hesitation that the man had been a victim of a cold-blooded conspiracy, the object of which was to oust him from opportunities and to forestall him in methods which would certainly have led to enormous wealth. he was apparently in a position and with the brains to do many of the things which the ablest and coldest financiers of his day had been and were doing, and they did not want to be bothered with, would not brook, in short, his approaching rivalry. like the various usurpers of regal powers in ancient days, they thought it best to kill a possible claimant to the throne in his infancy.
but that youth of his! the long and devious path by which he had come! among the papers relating to the case and to a time when he could not have been more than eighteen, and when he was beginning his career as a book agent, was a letter written to his mother (august, 1892), which read:
"my dear parents: please answer me at once if i can have anything of you, or something of you or nothing. remember this is the first and the last time in my life that i beg of you anything. you have given to the other child not $15 but hundreds, and now when i, the very youngest, ask of you, my parents, $15, are you going to be so hard-hearted as to refuse me? without these $15 it is left to me to be without income for two or three weeks.
"for god's sake, remember what i ask of you, and send me at once so that i should cease thinking of it. leon, as i have told you, will give me $10, $15 he has already paid for the contract, and your $15 will make $25. out of this i need $10 for a ticket and $15 for two or three weeks' board and lodging.
"please answer at once. don't wait for a minute, and send me the money or write me one word 'not.' remember this only that if you refuse me i will have nothing in common with you.
"your son,
"——"
there was another bit of testimony on the part of one henry dom, a baker, who for some strange reason came forward to identify him as some one he had known years before in williamsburgh, which read:
"i easily recognize them" (x—— and his sister) "from their pictures in the newspapers. i worked for x——'s father, who was a baker in williamsburgh, and frequently addressed letters that were written by x—— senior and his wife to dr. louise x—— who was then studying medicine in philadelphia. x—— was then a boy going to school, but working in his father's bakery mornings and evenings. he did not want to do that, moaned a great deal, and his parents humored him in his attitude. he was very vain, liked to appear intellectual. they kept saying to their friends that he should have a fine future. five years later, after i had left them once, i met the mother and she told me that x—— was studying banking and getting along fine."
some seven years after the failure and trial by which he had so summarily been disposed of and after he had been released from prison, i was standing at a certain unimportant street corner in new york waiting for a car when i saw him. he was passing in the opposite direction, not very briskly, and, as i saw, plainly meditatively. he was not so well dressed. the clothes he wore while good were somehow different, lacking in that exquisite something which had characterized him years before. his hat—well, it was a hat, not a romanoff shako nor a handsome panama such as he had affected in the old days. he looked tired, a little worn and dusty, i thought.
my first impulse was of course to hail him, my second not, since he had not seen me. it might have been embarrassing, and at any rate he might not have even remembered me. but as he walked i thought of the great house by the sea, the studio, the cars, the 40,000 roses, the crowds at his summer place, the receptions in town and out, madame of the earrings (afterward married to a french nobleman), and then of the letter to his mother as a boy, the broken shoes in the winter time, his denial of his parents, the telephone message from the financial tiger. "vanity, vanity," saith the preacher. the shores of our social seas are strewn with pathetic wrecks, the whitening bone of half-sand-buried ships.
at the next corner he paused, a little uncertain apparently as to which way to go, then turned to the left and was lost. i have never seen nor heard of him since.